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PGL Bucharest Major Preview

Eighteen teams head to Bucharest for the fourth Major of the 2017-2018 Dota Pro Circuit (DPC), fighting for a chance at the USD 1,000,000 prize pool and 1500 DPC points.

ESL Katowice might have shaken the DPC Leaderboard two weeks ago — Fnatic almost toppled Evil Geniuses and Mineski by making their way to a Major top 4, Vici Gaming used to be tied with Mineski but now sits comfortably at DPC Top 4, while Virtus.Pro successfully overtook Team Secret in the Top 1 spot. With back-to-back Valve Majors happening, this DPC race might be shaken once again, however. Most especially because of the fact that 14 out of the 18 teams participating at the Bucharest Major already have DPC points, and that there’s a fresh 7.10 Patch Update.

The Bucharest Major will run from Mar 4 to Mar 11. This includes a different Group Stage format as compared to other Majors: much like the Kiev Major format a year ago, the 16 teams will be placed in a single group to play the Swiss-system format. In this group stage, all matches will be played in a BO1, and all opposing teams will have the same Win/Loss record. Therefore, teams who won the first round will be facing each other in the second round, while teams who lost the first round will be facing each other in the second round. This will go on for five rounds, for example, 0-2 teams will face 0-2 teams and 2-1 teams will face 2-1 teams.

Only the top 8 teams from the Group Stage will advance to the playoffs. At this stage, they will be seeded accordingly into a single-elimination bracket where all matches are played in a BO3, excluding the BO5 Grand Finals.